Thursday, May 17, 2012

Above .500 Dosent Always Mean Post-Season Success

By Avry Lewis-McDougall

This weekend, the Edmonton Rush and the Rochester Knighthawks will play each other in the Champions Cup for all of the marbles, corn chips, and pogs in the NLL. Both teams have been able to get on a roll this post season with Edmonton getting wins over Calgary and Minny, while Rochester's route had them beating the Philadelphia Wings and the Toronto Rock to get to the finals.

One thing though that bugs many people about this match-up though are the regular season records of both teams. Edmonton finished the season at 6-10 and the Knighthawks at 7-9.

Many people feel that the best teams are not playing in the final because they have the better records and those that feel that way clearly do not know sports very well. Being the BEST team in the playoffs goes beyond the numbers, many teams over look their opposition who may have a worse record than them and wind up stumbling early in the playoffs. In the 2012 post season the Calgary Roughnecks who have basically dominated the Rush for the majority of Edmonton's existence since 2006 in the regular season are now 0-2 to Edmonton in post season play, and Calgary's record was 12-4, tops in all of the NLL in 2012.

Being the best in the post season truly means to me at least if you can catch lightning in a bottle you will do fine, the Rush and the Knighthawks are doing it and many teams in sports before have done it. The 2006 Edmonton Oilers, the 2010 Seattle Sehawks, the 1994 Denver Nuggets, the 2012 LA Kings, and countless other teams showed it is possible to make for far as an underdog. Do not just blindly look at the regular season records and assume that they are going to the title or are THE best in the playoffs.

I'm going to enjoy the Champions Cup final with my feet up watching the Rush and Knighthawks battle for NLL supremacy the regular season records to me are now thrown out of the window.
That's all for now I'm Avry and I'm out follow me on twitter, @Avry.

2 comments:

Are we going to have at least one final match-up for the first round of the jersey bracket? up? The Rochester third jerseys need to be mentioned (the original black diagonal "ROCHESTER" font on teal) if you do!There is at least the white Toronto Alternate, Colorado 10th Anniv., Calgary 10th Anniv. and Bandits 20th Anniv. sweaters left . . . or the pink (prostate cancer) or green (St. Patty's) Bandits jerseys from this seaosn.